“So, awareness and response — I think this is where the Holy Spirit of God really works very powerfully for me, sort of awakening me, keeping me aware, keeping me open. There is always something new ahead — and I’m saying that as a 90-year-old woman. I’m hoping that life continues to open itself to me — and this is a work of God’s Spirit.” — Luci Shaw
Listen in as WAP associate Caroline Triscik interviews poet Luci Shaw as they touch on topics around creativity, death, nature, and the friendships of women — with reflections on Luci's own close friendship with author Madeleine L'Engle. (Bonus: Luci reads several of her freshest poems for our enjoyment.)
"It was as a 19-year-old college student at InterVarsity’s Cedar Campus in the upper peninsula of Michigan that I was first introduced to Luci Shaw’s poetry. As a prize for being the first to write out all of the Scriptures that contained the phrase “one another” during a week of training to become a small group Bible study leader, I received an autographed copy of Luci Shaw’s compilation of poetry, Polishing the Petoskey Stone. Of course, this was in the days before we could just hop onto the internet and do a quick Google search. I can still picture the handwritten list in my head of the 36 or so passages I was able to find that helped expand my understanding of what it means to love one another. Receiving Luci’s poetry as a prize was a better gift than I could have expected. Now nearly 20 years later, I enjoyed the privilege of sitting down to chat with Luci — yet another good gift, and one that would be unimaginable to my young adult self."
— Caroline Triscik
You can listen on iTunes or at All Shall Be Well: Conversations with Women in the Academy and Beyond. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.
Links mentioned in this interview:
Luci's most recent poem (read aloud for us on the podcast):
How creation dares us
Into a wild embrace
Of what is too beautiful to ignore
You open your front door
And breathe
And all the old dust and confusion of your life
Falls behind you
You are not to remember it
No matter how it calls you
Instead
Bend and examine
Closely
How the grass has grown an inch
Under last night’s rain
And the peony buds are swelling
The tips of pink petals
Already bursting free like prisoners
Wrongly convicted
And now released
There’s such generosity out there
Reaching towards you
With hands opened
Claiming you
A created being
Issuing from the open mouth of God.
